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Comment by Racing0461 | Hacker News Reader

There is also a supreme court case about if the fed has the power to do this without a law.

Government agencies should only be able to do what congress defines in law.

A great example is ATF abusing the power to redefine what a pistol/rifle/machine gun are multiple times in the past decade. This leads to people who were previously compliant with the law, with prior written approval from the ATF, now are not compliant with their new definition and could face prosecution. All without any new law being passed, all being done by political appointees and bureaucrats.

Government agencies exist because congress is lazy and writing good regulation on every topic under the sun is hard. Congress describes what they want to happen, get their brownie points either from constituents or from rich donors, and move on. Regulators are then left with the actual work of creating the rules and implementing the systems that carry out that will.

The amount and degree of interpretation they are allowed to do is obviously up for debate (and has been litigated thoroughly and repeatedly) but its really silly to say "just do what congress says" as if congress doesn't constantly defer its responsibility for creating regulations to the executive.

Congress doesn't work that many days a year. Around 100 I think, lots of half days. They don't get to say anything is too hard until they work as much as a fast food cashier.

> They don't get to say anything is too hard until they work as much as a fast food cashier.

It actually turns out that they do get to say this

I was just teaching my 4 year old what euphemisms are last night. She had the same confusion.

just having a bit of fun. I completely agree with your comment as a statement of how things should be. My point is that we already can't force congress to do broadly popular things, let alone boring, controversial, difficult, politically fraught things. As a fan of having a functioning government, I think trying to force 535 selfish, rich, politically motivated lawyers to research, write, and vote on hundreds of thousands of pages of passable regulations is a nonstarter.

That's fine but I'm not going to hear calls of "our democracy" if the idea is a unelected permanent government is really in charge beacuse congress refuses to work more than 2 days a week.

> Congress doesn't work that many days a year. Around 100 I think, lots of half days.

You want elected leaders who are given zero days to spend time with their constituents?

In this case, Congress did define multiple times these terms explicitly in the 1934 National Firearms Act, the 1969 Gun Control act, the 1986 Hughes amendment, etc.

ATF's job in this case should be enforcing the existing law, not writing new law with no congressional approval and then enforcing it themselves.

I agree that congress did give them some limited power to adjust to changing times, however I believe that has been abused in recent years to enact backdoor legislation via Presidential order without going through the expected legislative channels. That power should be revoked.

I'm not really familiar with this specific case and you may very well be right that the ATF is overstepping. We already have multiple possible solutions to this problem. Statutory interpretation, congressional approval of cabinet members, or congress passing a new law that eliminates that interpretation are all solutions that are designed into our system. Elections are also a solution to this, although they're probably a bit too coarse to solve individual regulatory issues.

It is impossible to have an executive branch that doesn't interpret the law because the law is just a piece of paper. Determining what level of interpretation is okay is already a part of our system. There is no way to just revoke that power without just collapsing the government.

This post reminds me of the difference between declarative and imperative programming.

It would be interesting to see a review and evaluation of different law and regulation making approaches with their outcomes.

Maybe a better balance would be to have Congress delegate part of the implementation of regulation, but require them to review any major changes beforehand.

I think regulations should not be effective until passed into law, but the law can start when the regulation goes into effect up to two years before it is passed so long as what the law is was published then.

That is the government can create some complex regulation. If you continue to violate their regulation you will get a notice of fine, which you are then expected to put that fine into escrow, if the law is passed you owe the fine, if not you can collect it back (with interest?) in 2 years.

Congress cannot be an expert on every possible regulation that would be needed, that is a good job for hired bureaucrats. However they should be the final stamp on everything those bureaucrats propose.

Congress delegated rulemaking authority to the executive branch in a number of areas and has the power to un-delegate it, but has chosen to not exercise that power. They don't, in part, because that would create a lot of work for Congress, which would interfere with Congress' ability to solicit and deliver on bribes.

The US Constitution invested Congress with the power to write legislation. Congress chose to write legislation that created specific agencies, gave them broad power, and then outsourced fine-grained decision-making power to those agencies. At literally any point Congress wants, it can can revoke that power or adjust it.

Congress generally doesn't do this because it simply doesn't have the bandwidth, and so core government functions would become unscalable. But you can certainly vote for representatives who support this idea, and we could see how the results come out.

> The US Constitution invested Congress with the power to write legislation.

Then why are lobbyists writing so much of it?

> The US Constitution invested Congress with the power to write legislation.

More precisely, the power to pass federal legislation. Anyone can write legislation (I've done it, its fun! [0]), and the Constitution also protects doing this and trying to get it passed [1], but if you can't convince the legislative body with the power to pass it to do so, it has no legal effect.

[0] A couple times as a "what would it look like if we wanted to pursue this" in an state legislative office, other times as part of an extended government-simulation project as part of college coursework.

[1] This is part of the First Amendment right to petition.

+1. especially when the redefinition aligns with a change in administration. there are countless normal rules/regulations that can pass but when it counts as a material/constructive new change, it should come from congress and be an actual law.

Federal Reserve is not a government agency, and no government employees work for it. You can read their employee hiring and benefits and observe it does not follow government hiring process nor government civil service pension. They are a contractor to the government.

> a supreme court case about if the fed has the power to do this without a law

The Durbin Amendment specifically instructed the Fed to "limit fees charged to retailers for debit card processing" [1]. SCOTUS declined to review in 2015 [2]. I don't see anything on the docket challenging this precedent [3].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durbin_amendment

[2] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-debitcards-idUS...

[3] https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/terms/ot2023/

There's definitely some willing cooperation when Congress pawns off much of it's power to the administrative state, and dodging accountability is not the least among the reasons why (see the lack of single subject bills as another example). But agencies also just walk all over the boundary of the authority granted by Congress too, see West Virgina vs EPA:

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/20-1530_n758.pdf

Here's more info on the case for others interested. https://thehill.com/business/4231072-supreme-court-agrees-to...

I think the case is actually about forcing the fed to lower the rates because merchants think they are unfairly high, not whether they have the right to set the rates, which came from the Dodd-Frank Act.

The power to propose it? Or the power to force it?

The power of an executive branch agency to propose new rules. (ie new rule making without an act of congress).

Proposing new rules isn't making new rules though? I would be surprised if anyone isn't allowed to propose new rules.

Proposing a rule in this context is a step in the process of enacting it, not offering up a suggestion to Congress.

Okay but my question is still the same - is that step itself possibly illegal? I would think only the final step is what could be illegal.

The term "proposed" is used here where an executive branch agency gives notice to the federal registrar, waits the time needed for public comment, pretents to "ack" the public comments and passes said rule to then enforce. ie a law that pretty much bypasses congress.

the supreme court seems interested in looking at how much power can congress give to the executive branch.

see: https://www.federalregister.gov/uploads/2011/01/the_rulemaki...

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